After 3 years, Adgitize will be closing down. The owner, Ken Brown, sent out an email telling members that the site had become no longer profitable and explained what will happen next.
Account signups and new ad submissions have been closed, and on January 1, all ads will stop running.
If you have used Adgitize, make sure you have a valid Paypal address associated with your account. A prorated amount will be refunded for any ads currently running, and publishers will receive any earnings over $0.01, which will go out before January 10. If you do not have any valid payment method on your account by January 31, your earnings will become void, so make sure your Paypal is up to date!
It's a shame that the service hasn't been able to support itself. I've had some good experiences with Adgitize - it's brought me a lot of traffic on the several occasions that I advertised, and it's also brought me many payouts (which usually exceeded the cost of the advertising). I'm pleased that Ken did announce the closure and will be making the payments due and refunding the ads - it would be so easy to take the money and run, so this is very classy of him. It is a reflection of the same spirit in which Adgitize has been run - clear communication and class.
You can find Ken's full statement on the closure on the Adgitize blog.
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I've been using Entrecard for a long time now. The site has certainly gone down hill, but it has brought me a small amount of traffic and I've met people and discovered blogs that I really enjoy. So, I've stuck with it, even though I'm not as active as I once was. However, the Entrecard staff seems to have all but disappeared. Blogs everywhere are breaking the guidelines, and nothing has been done about it.
Let's take a look at the Entrecard Blog Quality Standards...
There are a few guidelines specifically, which blogs are breaking left and right. The web address must be valid, the Entrecard widget must be present, and most importantly, there must be at least 5 posts within the last 3 months.
An inactive blog is not a quality blog. The great thing about blogs is that they are dynamic. But if a blogger doesn't update, then their blog is just another static webpage. I understand that sometimes life gets in the way of blogging, but there are blogs on Entrecard that have not been updated since last year -- I use the 'report this blog' link on Entrecard, but does it fall on deaf ears? The blogs are never removed.
It is apparent that no one on Entrecard staff is actually paying attention to these reports, and they do not care to enforce the rules. Heck, even the official Entrecard blog hasn't been updated in over 5 months. There is even one account in my category which got 110 drops in the past five days, but the link leads to a 404! The webpage doesn't exist anymore, but somehow it is still getting dropped on -- why doesn't the moderation team do anything about this?
So is Entrecard all but defunct? It saddens me to think that EC has been abandoned, but they have had a long history of poor leadership and rotten choices. I enjoy the free advertising and I enjoy reading peoples' blogs, but Entrecard is obviously not everything that it could be, especially as the staff seems to have fled!
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How much traffic does $20 bring you?
December 19, 2011 advertising, blogging, marketing, website traffic, websites
I just read a fascinating series of blog posts from Sodaware - about advertising, and how much traffic you can get for $19.95.
He examined a whole slew of different advertising and marketing methods, both free and pay - for the pay ad services, his budget was $19.95, and for the free marketing, he set a time limit of a half hour. This was a smart way to compare services, because as they say, nothing is free - your time is worth something too. A lot of times, it's more efficient to just pay for advertising than to spend hours on fruitless "free" ads.
Read part 1, the introduction and part 2, the results.
Many of Sodaware's results were as to be expected, but some lessons are worth repeating - like good targeting is key to successful ads. You'll get better results with ads on a well-targeted, medium-traffic side, than poorly-targeted ads on a huge-traffic site.
It's interesting to see the variety of uses and traffic that each ad service can bring - Stumbleupon users are low-attention-span, high-bounce visits that can spark a viral wave of traffic, while a well-targeted ad placed on a highly relevant site can bring in newsletter subscriptions and loyal readers. Which type you choose is up to you, or it could behoove you to diversify your tactics to get both loyal readers and viral bursts.
He examined a whole slew of different advertising and marketing methods, both free and pay - for the pay ad services, his budget was $19.95, and for the free marketing, he set a time limit of a half hour. This was a smart way to compare services, because as they say, nothing is free - your time is worth something too. A lot of times, it's more efficient to just pay for advertising than to spend hours on fruitless "free" ads.
Read part 1, the introduction and part 2, the results.
Many of Sodaware's results were as to be expected, but some lessons are worth repeating - like good targeting is key to successful ads. You'll get better results with ads on a well-targeted, medium-traffic side, than poorly-targeted ads on a huge-traffic site.
It's interesting to see the variety of uses and traffic that each ad service can bring - Stumbleupon users are low-attention-span, high-bounce visits that can spark a viral wave of traffic, while a well-targeted ad placed on a highly relevant site can bring in newsletter subscriptions and loyal readers. Which type you choose is up to you, or it could behoove you to diversify your tactics to get both loyal readers and viral bursts.
You Can't Do it All: The Upsides of Outsourcing
December 11, 2011 advertising, blogging, how to, make money, websites
When someone starts their own business, they quickly learn they have to take on many hats: web designer, marketer, graphic designer, editor & proofreader, accountant, customer service... and that's besides whatever the business is actually for! Some people are blessed with the skills to do many of these well, but there's always something that you're not good at, and once the business grows past a certain point, you're going to need an extra hand.
As your business expands, you just can't do it all. That's why you need to outsource some of your work. This doesn't have to mean a team of staff or a hired assistant, though it could. But, let's start small.
Just about the smallest you can start at is hiring someone through a Fiverr gig. Fiverr is a site where people post what they are willing to do for $5 - which can range from logo & website design to copywriting to photo editing and much more. If you need a quick hand at something you're not good at, browse around Fiverr and see who you can commission. Before selecting a gig, make sure to read through the seller's feedback. If the gig is a bust, you're only out 5 bucks - but if it goes well, it's often a great deal!
I've ordered a logo design and a blog banner from Fiverr for my business - the logo was returned to me within a day, and I was pretty pleased with the results. You can't expect the moon & the stars for $5, but if you're short on cash, it's a good start and it was way better than I could have done myself.
Remember that you can't do everything yourself - other people can lighten your load, and oftentimes do it better than you could have done on your own. You don't have to spend a whole lot of money for some extra help - a little bit can go a long way. Check within your niche to see if there are people who would be willing to barter for goods or services that you can provide. That way, you get the help you need, and they get something else they want, too.
As your business expands, you just can't do it all. That's why you need to outsource some of your work. This doesn't have to mean a team of staff or a hired assistant, though it could. But, let's start small.
Just about the smallest you can start at is hiring someone through a Fiverr gig. Fiverr is a site where people post what they are willing to do for $5 - which can range from logo & website design to copywriting to photo editing and much more. If you need a quick hand at something you're not good at, browse around Fiverr and see who you can commission. Before selecting a gig, make sure to read through the seller's feedback. If the gig is a bust, you're only out 5 bucks - but if it goes well, it's often a great deal!
I've ordered a logo design and a blog banner from Fiverr for my business - the logo was returned to me within a day, and I was pretty pleased with the results. You can't expect the moon & the stars for $5, but if you're short on cash, it's a good start and it was way better than I could have done myself.
Remember that you can't do everything yourself - other people can lighten your load, and oftentimes do it better than you could have done on your own. You don't have to spend a whole lot of money for some extra help - a little bit can go a long way. Check within your niche to see if there are people who would be willing to barter for goods or services that you can provide. That way, you get the help you need, and they get something else they want, too.
Free Promotion or Theft? The Fine Line, and treating your readers well
August 19, 2011 advertising, blogging
Sometimes, when someone is working to build a brand or promote a product, they can get anxious about anyone else encroaching on their territory. By trying to keep their audience close enough so they won't slip away, they actually have them in a chokehold - thus missing out on opportunities. With a bit more freedom, your true fans can be your greatest asset for free and effortless promotion.
Let me explain with a case study. The TV show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has become a huge underground hit on the internet, among a completely unexpected demographic - teenage and 20-something males. The entire first season is up on Youtube, along with hundreds upon hundreds of fan videos, Pony-inspired music, remixes, fanart, and so on.
Hasbro's main interest in the show was to sell toys, so it let the Youtube copyright infringement slide. And, in allowing the videos to remain online, they have gained a huge base of fans who gobble up every bit of merch that Hasbro can produce, and evangelize the show to other people, creating even more fans. If the show were not easily, freely accessible online, this fanbase would never have created. Only airing on Hasbro's premium cable channel, The Hub, the show would have languished in preteen girl obscurity.
Treat your audience well, with generosity and enthusiasm, and they will do marketing for you. Treat them with suspicion and jealousy, and you may very well end up losing them. This philosophy can be extended to blogging and internet marketing as well. If you desperately scramble for conversions, using tactics like popover advertising or not including full posts in your RSS feeds, you might alienate your readers. But if you are generous to them, you will be repaid with loyal readers who will tell their friends about your Cool Thing, whatever it is. If you love your readers, let them go, and then they will come back to you.
Let me explain with a case study. The TV show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has become a huge underground hit on the internet, among a completely unexpected demographic - teenage and 20-something males. The entire first season is up on Youtube, along with hundreds upon hundreds of fan videos, Pony-inspired music, remixes, fanart, and so on.
Hasbro's main interest in the show was to sell toys, so it let the Youtube copyright infringement slide. And, in allowing the videos to remain online, they have gained a huge base of fans who gobble up every bit of merch that Hasbro can produce, and evangelize the show to other people, creating even more fans. If the show were not easily, freely accessible online, this fanbase would never have created. Only airing on Hasbro's premium cable channel, The Hub, the show would have languished in preteen girl obscurity.
Treat your audience well, with generosity and enthusiasm, and they will do marketing for you. Treat them with suspicion and jealousy, and you may very well end up losing them. This philosophy can be extended to blogging and internet marketing as well. If you desperately scramble for conversions, using tactics like popover advertising or not including full posts in your RSS feeds, you might alienate your readers. But if you are generous to them, you will be repaid with loyal readers who will tell their friends about your Cool Thing, whatever it is. If you love your readers, let them go, and then they will come back to you.
Digital Content is Perfect for Passive Income
July 20, 2011 how to, passive income, writing
Selling digital content is an ideal passive income stream. The reason is, once you've written, designed, photographed, recorded, or otherwise created your content, it's there for good and you can sell as many copies as you like. Unlike selling physical tangible objects, you have infinite stock and so long as someone wants to buy your item, they are able to.
Some examples of digital content are: eBooks, audiobooks, music albums, photographs, computer programs, smartphone apps... The list goes on. Think about what you're good at or what you enjoy doing, and try to think about what sort of digital content fits into that category. Are you a crafty person? Think about instruction manuals or patterns. For instance, I like to knit - so I sell knitting patterns for items I've designed.
If you can set up a shop front, and an automatic delivery system, you're all set. You don't really have to do anything else, and with some luck your sales will start rolling in.
But of course, you need an audience, and you need people to want to buy your product. So, you need a quality product, first and foremost. It needs to be original, interesting, or helpful - and for god's sake, don't copy someone else's work! Don't just slap something on a page, either. It may take quite some time to produce quality digital content, but once you've created it, it will always be there for you to sell. You never have to worry about taking inventory or restocking!
You may also want to do some promotion for your digital content. If you already have a blog or website readership, you already have a potential audience for your product -- so long as it's relevant. Well-placed links on your webpage layout could lead to some sales from people who were visiting your website anyway. If you've got a large web audience already, this may be all you need to do to generate enough sales for passive income.
Otherwise, you might need to expand beyond your own site. Check out websites that sell your particular flavor of digital content - be it eBooks, mp3 albums, craft patterns, whatever. These will expose your content to a much wider audience, usually for a small cut of your sales. If your content is well-presented and high-quality, it has the potential to sell well on outside websites.
Some examples of digital content are: eBooks, audiobooks, music albums, photographs, computer programs, smartphone apps... The list goes on. Think about what you're good at or what you enjoy doing, and try to think about what sort of digital content fits into that category. Are you a crafty person? Think about instruction manuals or patterns. For instance, I like to knit - so I sell knitting patterns for items I've designed.
If you can set up a shop front, and an automatic delivery system, you're all set. You don't really have to do anything else, and with some luck your sales will start rolling in.
But of course, you need an audience, and you need people to want to buy your product. So, you need a quality product, first and foremost. It needs to be original, interesting, or helpful - and for god's sake, don't copy someone else's work! Don't just slap something on a page, either. It may take quite some time to produce quality digital content, but once you've created it, it will always be there for you to sell. You never have to worry about taking inventory or restocking!
You may also want to do some promotion for your digital content. If you already have a blog or website readership, you already have a potential audience for your product -- so long as it's relevant. Well-placed links on your webpage layout could lead to some sales from people who were visiting your website anyway. If you've got a large web audience already, this may be all you need to do to generate enough sales for passive income.
Otherwise, you might need to expand beyond your own site. Check out websites that sell your particular flavor of digital content - be it eBooks, mp3 albums, craft patterns, whatever. These will expose your content to a much wider audience, usually for a small cut of your sales. If your content is well-presented and high-quality, it has the potential to sell well on outside websites.
When will Entrecard get cleaned up?
June 27, 2011 blogging, entrecardI've been using Entrecard for a long time now. The site has certainly gone down hill, but it has brought me a small amount of traffic and I've met people and discovered blogs that I really enjoy. So, I've stuck with it, even though I'm not as active as I once was. However, the Entrecard staff seems to have all but disappeared. Blogs everywhere are breaking the guidelines, and nothing has been done about it.
Let's take a look at the Entrecard Blog Quality Standards...
There are a few guidelines specifically, which blogs are breaking left and right. The web address must be valid, the Entrecard widget must be present, and most importantly, there must be at least 5 posts within the last 3 months.
An inactive blog is not a quality blog. The great thing about blogs is that they are dynamic. But if a blogger doesn't update, then their blog is just another static webpage. I understand that sometimes life gets in the way of blogging, but there are blogs on Entrecard that have not been updated since last year -- I use the 'report this blog' link on Entrecard, but does it fall on deaf ears? The blogs are never removed.
It is apparent that no one on Entrecard staff is actually paying attention to these reports, and they do not care to enforce the rules. Heck, even the official Entrecard blog hasn't been updated in over 5 months. There is even one account in my category which got 110 drops in the past five days, but the link leads to a 404! The webpage doesn't exist anymore, but somehow it is still getting dropped on -- why doesn't the moderation team do anything about this?
So is Entrecard all but defunct? It saddens me to think that EC has been abandoned, but they have had a long history of poor leadership and rotten choices. I enjoy the free advertising and I enjoy reading peoples' blogs, but Entrecard is obviously not everything that it could be, especially as the staff seems to have fled!
Traffic from PostZoom
June 4, 2011 blogging, website traffic, websites
A few weeks ago I signed my main blog up to PostZoom. It's a website meant to be a directory of categorized blog posts, bringing quality posts to visitors and some extra traffic to bloggers. So, does it work? Let's see...
There are two things you need to do in order to start getting traffic from PostZoom. First, you have to have the widget on your blog. This widget can go anywhere - I put mine in the sidebar. The widget shows other blog posts from categories that you get to choose, and you can display as few or as many of these as you like. I like that you can choose the categories, so the only posts that show up in my widget are ones that are relevant to my readers.
Next, you load your blog posts into PostZoom. This takes some time, because you can only load two posts in per day to prevent spamming (which makes sense). Load some of your most interesting and informative posts into PostZoom, making sure to place them in a relevant category with a snappy image and good tags.
PostZoom will not give you a huge upsurge in traffic, but it will give you a little bit. As a not-very-active Entrecarder, I get about the same amount of traffic from PostZoom and Entrecard. The more posts you load into PostZoom, and the more popular those posts are, the more traffic you will be able to get from it. Unfortunately, you are likely never to make the main front page of PostZoom, because those posts are sorted by traffic. So the ones on the main page get clicked on more, bringing up their traffic, and leading into a vicious circle. But, you may find yourself at the top of your category, which will give you a little bit more traffic.
I don't trust PostZoom's internal statistics - if you click on the stats section of their website, they will give you some high number that will not match at all to your other analytics programs. I think those statistics are for the individual post pages on PostZoom, not your site. However, if you use an independent analytics program like Google Analytics or Sitemeter, you will be able to see PostZoom as a referrer and track how much traffic you are getting from them. It won't be a huge amount, but if your traffic is low to begin with, then it will make a difference.
There are two things you need to do in order to start getting traffic from PostZoom. First, you have to have the widget on your blog. This widget can go anywhere - I put mine in the sidebar. The widget shows other blog posts from categories that you get to choose, and you can display as few or as many of these as you like. I like that you can choose the categories, so the only posts that show up in my widget are ones that are relevant to my readers.
Next, you load your blog posts into PostZoom. This takes some time, because you can only load two posts in per day to prevent spamming (which makes sense). Load some of your most interesting and informative posts into PostZoom, making sure to place them in a relevant category with a snappy image and good tags.
PostZoom will not give you a huge upsurge in traffic, but it will give you a little bit. As a not-very-active Entrecarder, I get about the same amount of traffic from PostZoom and Entrecard. The more posts you load into PostZoom, and the more popular those posts are, the more traffic you will be able to get from it. Unfortunately, you are likely never to make the main front page of PostZoom, because those posts are sorted by traffic. So the ones on the main page get clicked on more, bringing up their traffic, and leading into a vicious circle. But, you may find yourself at the top of your category, which will give you a little bit more traffic.
I don't trust PostZoom's internal statistics - if you click on the stats section of their website, they will give you some high number that will not match at all to your other analytics programs. I think those statistics are for the individual post pages on PostZoom, not your site. However, if you use an independent analytics program like Google Analytics or Sitemeter, you will be able to see PostZoom as a referrer and track how much traffic you are getting from them. It won't be a huge amount, but if your traffic is low to begin with, then it will make a difference.
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